Oh I know it's clichéd advice, but if you haven't got a good circle of friends around you telling you that, you need to know that there are some of us out here who are starting to feel sorry for you.

And while you may think most women are against you - and undoubtedly plenty are - it's the men who are really putting the knife in.

Podgy, pale male newspaper executives are frothing at the mouth at their news conferences working out just how they can cheapen you more than they've already done in the past few weeks.

"Rhino: I bedded horny Ulrika" said The Sun last week, in case you missed it. And the second paragraph read "And Rhino - real name Mark Smith - said the sexy Swedish stunner bedded HIM."

Those are The Sun's capital letters, Ulrika.

Ohmigawd - a woman seduced a man? Front page news that - the tart!

And, horror of horrors, Rhino also revealed that you were "a sexual animal".

No matter how far we think we've come, men think women who have a fair few sexual partners are tarts, trollops (vis-a-vis your fellow kiss ‘n' teller Edwina) and sluttish.

Demonstrate you might actually like sex and you're cheap. It's the old double, or maybe even triple standards again.

Show your boobs off, wear scarlet outfits slashed to the waist like a certain Italian lady (I loved your smirky comment that it was "lovely" and wasn't it just?) and you'll get ogled and salivated over. It's not cheap or harlot-like (have you noticed there's n'er a word in existence for a male harlot?) to nudge old Bob at the bar and leer that you'd "give ‘er one".

Dress classily (as you did the other night at the TV awards even though you couldn't decide which way round your top went) but admit to a bit of a colourful sex life and Bob and his mates are going to call you a right slapper.

If Nancy Dell'Olio went on What Not to Wear, Trinny and Susannah would have a field day. You, meanwhile, would score quite well.

Most of us women, of course, think a real tart is a woman who dresses like one while men can't quite get their vacant little heads round that theory. How often do they fall for the scarlet stilettos, the sparkles, the big hair and the

slap that looks like you've nicked Lily Savage's make-up bag?

And have you noticed, Ulrika, most of the barbs are coming from the old smug marrieds as well as the men.

Even though I hear that when a friend came round to your Cookham Dean home last week instead of putting the percolater on you went down to Starbucks for the coffee, I don't think you should hide away from that self-righteous little clique.

You've even been pilloried for the way you've treated your children while trying to have a love life. Kids and a sex life when you're a single mum? Floozie! Nymphet!

Well, you just wait, Ulrika. I'm a single mother and when the A-level exam results came out recently my son and the daughter of my good friend - who's also a single mum - got glowing results and places at university while two offspring of the smug marrieds are having to retake their college year.

How we smirked as we told the kids to stay up the chimney until we got home from the pub!

I hope you sell lots of books.

And I hope that one day we might be able to read the headline: "Ulrika: I bedded horny (insert your own Gladiator/Pop Idol/assorted footballer) and he seduced ME."

It'll only happen when women really and truly become equal in sexual, career and personal terms with men.

A faint hope, I know. But we can fantasise.

When, of course, we're not thinking about writhing around with a Rhino instead of the ironing.